Principal Enterprise Architect - Technology

Work Model: Hybrid - Desired candidates reside in San Francisco, CA (anywhere in the Bay Area) and are comfortable with up to 50% travel.

Level: Director

Cognizant (Nasdaq-100: CTSH) is one of the world's leading professional services companies, redefining clients' business, operating and technology models for the digital era. Our outstanding industry-based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S., Cognizant is on the Fortune 500 and is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at www.cognizant.com or follow us @Cognizant.

We are seeking a highly skilled Technology Principal Architect with Communications and generative AI/AI ML focus. Strong in digital transformation and tech rationalization work who will focus across accounts on tech debt. Tech debt in the comms industry is approximately 1 trillion dollars. While a lot of transformation initiatives are taking place, cost take out involving SaaS licenses reduction and high cost, high maintenance infrastructure takes out while adopting technologies like GenAI is critical. This involves a unique blend of understanding modern technologies, with good domain and business context.

Key Responsibilities:

* Strategic Planning: Developing and overseeing the long-term technology strategy to align with the company's business goals and market trends

* Technology Leadership: Leading the adoption of new technologies and ensuring the integration of innovative solutions across the organization. Drive the agenda for Innovation Center with Comms customers

* System Architecture: Designing and maintaining the overall system architecture, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.

* Cross-Functional Collaboration: Working closely with various departments such as IT, network operations, and business units to ensure cohesive and efficient operations.

* Regulatory Compliance: Ensuring that all systems and processes comply with industry regulations and standards.

* Performance Optimization: Continuously monitoring and optimizing the performance of the network and IT infrastructure.

* Risk Management: Identifying potential risks and developing mitigation strategies to ensure business continuity.

* Vendor Management: Managing relationships with technology vendors and service providers to ensure the best solutions and services are procured.

* Innovation and R&D: Leading research and development efforts to explore new technologies and solutions that can provide a competitive edge. Develop and publish agent catalog across telecom domain and other verticals

* Customer Focus: Ensuring that all technology initiatives and solutions are designed to enhance the customer experience.

Experience:

* Minimum 10+ years in senior leadership role

* Minimum 15+ years of complex solutioning experience, with broad technical experience

* Extensive experience working with telco businesses

* Good communication / analysis / problem solving and client facing skills are mandatory

* Preferred background:

* Broad and deep exposure in areas of cloud infrastructure, enterprise architecture, data management and AI.

Key Competencies: (includes knowledge / skills / abilities required for delivering the responsibilities effectively)

* Strong Expertise in hands on experience in leading large Technical and complex transformation programs for architecture strategy, design and deployment

* Strong experience as Principal enterprise architect across clients in the telecom industry

* Expert in telecom end to end business processes (OSS/BSS).

* Strong solution architecture experience understanding end to end capabilities used in the telco industry, with a proven ability to decompose broad based processes into functional components.

* Good understanding of the use of low code/no code platforms / COTS products in the telecom industry (Salesforce, Pega, ServiceNow, Amdocs, Adobe suite of products)

* GenAI related certifications / exposure

* Experience building telco domain-based solution offerings focused on next gen tech stack and SaaS replacement

* Deep exposure in Agentic, gen AI, LLM, SLM, infrastructure and data pipelines

* Exposure to TMF specifications and ODA is a plus

The annual base salary for this position is between $180,000 and $ 210,000. This position is also eligible for Cognizant's discretionary annual incentive program, based on performance and subject to the terms of Cognizant's applicable plans.

Benefits: Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:

* Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

* Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off

* 401(k) plan and contributions

* Long-term/Short-term Disability

* Paid Parental Leave

* Employee Stock Purchase Plan